


Developments

by BewareTheIdes15



Series: Developments!AU [2]
Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Comment Fic, M/M, Nude Beach, Photographs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-25
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-23 01:13:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/244611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BewareTheIdes15/pseuds/BewareTheIdes15
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seriously, who besides little old ladies that are scared of their 'internet boxes' actually takes pictures on film anymore? Evidently, the answer is 'people who buy shitty one-time-use cameras on their tour of nude beaches'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Developments

**Author's Note:**

> written for zuben_eschamali's prompt at the J2 Summerbreak meme: "Jared's seen some weird stuff in his job at the photo lab, so he's not going to judge whoever it is that's getting 8x10s of their summer vacation photos that apparently included a trip to a nude beach. He just doesn't expect the hotass in the photos to come to the store in person to pick them up."
> 
> This really could have been a simple, fluffy one-off, it would have been so easy, but I have a compulsion that just refuses to let things be easy. You'll see what I mean.

Working at the photo lab was supposed to be a breeze, that's why Jared took the job in the first place. Well, ok, mostly he took the job because his dad pulled the "You're in college now, you're not going to waste your whole summer laying around the house playing Assassination," routine and had been no little bit unimpressed by Jared's explanation that it's _Assassin's Creed_. What the fuck ever. Point is, this whole gig was supposed to be about kicking back in the A/C, getting in some trashy paperback reading and collecting an hourly, because, seriously, who besides little old ladies that are scared of their 'internet boxes' actually takes pictures on film anymore?

Evidently, the answer is 'people who buy shitty one-time-use cameras on their tour of nude beaches'.

Jared's actually pretty sure they aren't even supposed to make prints of this kind of stuff - seems like his manager had said something about a company policy on the first day but Jared had kind of tuned out after they covered the 30 minutes for lunch and two fifteen minute breaks a day bit. In his defense, there wasn't any way for him to know that the 8x10 glossies that the order sheet had requested for the little yellow disposable were going to turn out to be full of naked people.

Seems like a waste to throw them out now, though, since they're all printed up and everything. Really he's just being eco-conscious by not tossing them. It's not like anybody in the photos is doing anything bad anyway; they're all just naked. It's practically art!

Alright, not _art_.

Turns out most of the people who hang around on nude beaches should be federally mandated to never be naked - up to and including the privacy of their own showers. Yeesh. Some things can never be unseen. On the other hand, there are a couple of exceptions roaming around amidst the sun and surf.

What? Checking through the photos for print quality is part of Jared's job.

There's one guy in particular that's just... well, it's not hard to figure out why whoever was behind the camera chose to focus so much on him.

The first couple of shots of him are artsy-fartsy angles; looking out at the ocean over the guy's shoulder, pale, freckle-dusted skin - must have been a total bitch to keep slathered in SPF - taking up more of the photo than the sparkling blue-and-white crash of waves. Jared loses a minute or two over that whole slathering idea when he flips to the next picture and finds a landscape of the guy's back as he lays out in the powdery, golden sand. It was obviously taken while the photographer was laying down too, a close up from a 45-degree angle so that the curve of his shoulder is nearest, spreading out like a welcome mat to a muscular back, slim waist and this tight little bubble of an ass that would fit just right in the palm of Jared's hand.

After that, there's one where the camera's all up in this guy's business, his face turned away as he reads something out of focus in the background. It's hard to really make out what he looks like from this, most of the photo dominated by the expanse of a strong cheekbone and jaw, but he can make out blondish-red hair at the edges, clipped short and spiky, bits and pieces of it golden where the sun catches on it, just like the butterfly-wing sweep of thick lashes. Below them there's an outline of a nose, distorted by the perspective, but clearly spattered with more cinnamon freckles and lower still, the curve of lips just on the edges of the camera's scope, teasing with the promise of fullness.

All of a sudden Jared really fucking needs to know what this guy looks like so he skims further into the stack of pictures, by-passing the ones of scenery or other people, pausing here and there to admire abstract images of the jut of the guy's hip, glistening with sweat, begging to be licked, or a strong hand resting low on taut abs, one finger nestled in dark bronze curls but still too high up to be anything more than an appetizer.

He catches himself wondering what the odds are that whoever took all of these is a legit photog who accidentally forgot to bring all of their fancy equipment to a shoot and that this guy is actually just a model, not somebody the person behind the camera is boning. That could happen, right?

As soon as the thought hits Jared sets the pictures down because that right there was a little too invested for Jared to really be comfortable with. It's just some dude in some pictures. Some hot-ass dude in some hot-ass pictures, but still. He's probably from, like, Europe or wherever it is that going to nude beaches and letting people take skin pics of you with disposable cameras is all normal and fine and shit. There is no way in hell Jared is ever going to meet him.

Which... which actually is a damn good reason to at least go ahead and finish checking out the handful of photos left. What Freckles doesn't know won't hurt him, right? And since Jared's never going to meet him, it's not creepy stalkerish or anything. Besides, there's still every chance that he's a 'butter face' so...

Yeah, fuck it, Jared's totally looking at the rest of those pictures.

There are a couple of really disappointing shots of a goddamn lighthouse - what the serious fuck? priorities, anybody? - and then, and then- _Hot. Damn._

In the next to last picture the guy is still lying down, except this time there are glittering beads of moisture scattered all over heat-pink skin, shimmering borderlines of it down the center of his body, in the bend where thigh meets groin, highlighting all of the right parts in all of the right ways.

Oh yeah, and he's lying on his back. Did Jared forget to mention that?

The camera comes at this shot like the photographer was on their way back from the water. With the way the sun's positioned, you still can't see the guy's face, but hell, who really cares when everything else on display is so attention-worthy.

From this one it's obvious that the subject's lower body is just as toned as his upper, legs bowed a little bit like Jared needed any more damn incentive to imagine them wrapped around his waist.

Clearly all the blonde that model-dude is sporting comes naturally because the carefully manscaped carpet definitely matches the drapes; his balls are bare, either shaved or waxed - would probably feel fucking awesome in Jared's mouth - but there's a nest of almost-auburn curls around the soft swell of his pretty, cut dick. It’s just exactly as good-looking as the rest of him too, slightly darker than the rest of his skin, probably velvety-smooth, thicker than average even at rest.

Jared hasn’t exactly been drowning in experience since he came out last year but he’s done enough to know that there’s something that just nails him about sucking a guy when he’s soft, taking it all the way in and feeling it fatten up for him. If there has ever been an ideal candidate to practice on, it’d be that sweet fucking cock.

It's not even a challenge for Jared to imagine himself there, crawling up between the spread of the guy's legs, and letting it slide right into his mouth; feel it do that funny little twitch as blood tries to fill it all at once. He’d let it swell just enough that he could start to feel it at the back of his throat – still has to work on his gag-reflex, but he has a feeling neither of them would mind putting in the effort to train that – and then pull off, skipping right over his rapidly hardening length to lap up the briny sea-water pooled in the dip of his navel. He'd kiss the soft skin and tongue at it in parody of what he could be doing to the guy's mouth or, lower, in that tantalizing shadow between strong thighs where his fingers would be slipping, just slick enough with sweat and a lingering bit of sunscreen to push one-

The electronic chime of the door opening might as well be a gunshot for how it makes Jared jump, nearly falling off the spinning chair behind the desk and straight onto the floor. _Stealthy motherfucker to register one, please._

He stuffs the little bit of still-life sex he was just ogling back into its stack praying to everything that is holy and good that the picture underneath it isn't even dirtier but not really getting a chance to check. And from the looks of it, he's screwed on that count too, because the guy - holy fucking hell, what kind of unfair is it that Jared has to stand here and try to will away an erection while staring at a face as hot as this guy's? - waiting one too-short red plastic countertop away immediately fixes on the pictures in Jared's hand.

Great. Just fucking great. Not only is he going to get fired for staring at whatever level of filth is in that last picture that's making the customer's gorgeous green eyes bug out - probably a mega close up of cock, knowing his luck, and he's not even getting to enjoy it - in somebody's private, against-policy nudie pics, but he also blows any shot of not looking like a major spazzy perv-o in front of possibly the best looking man Jared's ever seen in real life. If ever there was an optimum time for lightning to strike Jared dead, this would be it.

Of course - so surprise here - nature decides to hang Jared out to dry instead; sadistic elemental force. So rather than relishing a swift and merciful demise, Jared's stuck gurgling out incoherent sounds in place of an explanation he just doesn't have.

For what it's worth, the supermodel-of-his-dreams seems to be just as humiliated by the whole thing as Jared is. That doesn't actually sound plausible since Jared is trying to develop Kitty Pryde's melt-through-the-floor powers right this second, but the guy really does look it from the way his cheeks have gone bright pink, accenting the darker smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and the way his hands shoot up to cover his face, fingers mussing the perfectly quaffed prickle of his blondish hai-

No way. Like, literally, there is no way. Way is in complete absence. Come back tomorrow, we're all out of way.

Jared's eyes fly down to the stack of photos still in his hand. A pretty red-haired girl grins up at him, one tit on display as she holds the camera out away from her body, the other hidden where it's pressed up against a muscular torso. The glossy finish clings just a little bit to the moisture of Jared's thumb as he lifts it up to reveal the face of the guy he's spent most of the morning perving over. The same guy standing at the counter looking like he'd rather be on a one way bus to hell.

"I don't suppose there happens to be a small room back there somewhere where I could go die of shame?" the dude groans, muffled by his own palms. He makes a vain attempt at a laugh that just ends up making the question sound even more serious.

"Sorry, I already called dibs," Jared jokes back awkwardly. He's trying really hard to look at, you know, _anything_ that doesn't happen to be a guy he had just been building an explicit sexual fantasy around a minute ago or the pictures the prompted said fantasy in the first place.

This time Freckles manages an actual laugh, even if there's an edge on it that's slightly hysterical. On the plus side, he pulls his hands away from his face to brace them on the counter instead. On the minus side, that makes it a shit-ton harder for Jared to not stare at him like a sex-crazed lunatic. He's just so adorably pink!

"Does it make it any better if I point out that my friend swore she was never going to get those developed?" He takes a hand back again and scrubs it across his jaw, the slight rasp of barely visible stubble seeming freakishly loud over the hum of the air conditioner. "And that she's a lying bitch."

For reasons beyond human comprehension, what sticks in Jared's brain out of all of that is 'friend'. Not 'girlfriend', _'friend'_. As in, 'woman I go to the beach with naked and take dirty photos with and let press all up against me without ever getting hard over' friend. That's almost exactly the same thing as 'I'm gay', isn't it?

"Um, they're good pictures," is the brilliant conversational maneuver Jared comes up with. Yeah, smooth like sandpaper, baby. Between his sparkling charm and lucrative career path, it's a wonder he can even get to his front door at night for all of the guys just clamoring to get a chance at dating him.

Breaking some sort of law of nature, Freckles blushes even harder - the tips of his ears almost scarlet.

"Y-yeah?" he says, straight white teeth catching his plush bottom lip between them as he ducks his head, glances up at Jared through his lashes, back down, back up. There's just way too many directions for Jared to go with that visual.

"I mean," Jared fumbles, trying to remember how to smush words together to make a sentence, "I don't know much about photography, but I liked them."

Shit. Well, maybe Freckles will feel better if they're both blushing.

"Yeah?" he repeats, steadier now but also more breathy. Hopeful maybe? That could have been hope. Jared's going to call it hope. "Danni's an art student. I unpacked her camera from the beach bag specifically for this reason. Guess this is my punishment. I was kinda hoping I'd get here before they were developed and could just burn the damn thing."

There's a smile trying hard to tilt up the corner of those bee-stung lips, just a little hint of one and Jared really wants to see it come out to play.

He's going to go ahead and blame that for the fact that his mouth suddenly runs away with him and says, "Tell you what, we can go ahead and call this our little secret if..."

And there the guy goes, biting his lip again like he's actually trying to kill Jared, except this time it seems like he's attempting to hold back a smile with the move. "If?" he prompts, leaning in so his elbows are resting on the counter.

This is stupid. Really advanced levels of stupid because this could blow up in Jared’s face big time - somehow he has a feeling 'got fired for sexually harassing a customer' will sit even worse with his Dad than the _Assassin's Creed_ debacle. But, see, Freckles is smiling at him and a good three-quarters of Jared's braincells decided to go off and start a fanclub about it instead of doing their damn jobs so there's nothing to stop him from going the distance.

Jared thumbs through the prints that somehow he never quite remembered to put down until he finds the one that's just the side of Freckles' face, more of an impression than anything. That one he pulls free and flips over so there's nothing but tiny grey scrolls of KODAK staring up at the ceiling between them.

"If I can have your number."

God! _Fuck!_ Cheeseball! Attack of the Cheese Monster! Hide your eligible bachelors and shield your children's ears that they may not know the trauma of the most cheese-tastic thing anybody's ever said! Time to claim those dibs on the small room to die of shame in.

The guy is laughing. It's soft, though, not exactly like he's making fun of Jared's utter lameness. Plus, he's still smiling and now he's doing that brain-melting 'look up at Jared through his lashes' thing again which is just eight different kinds of unfair. And he's reaching across the desk for a pen. And scribbling out something on the back of the picture.

"I'm Jared, by the way," he adds as he tries not to be too enthralled by the way the guy’s tongue peeks out of the corner of his mouth as he writes. Freckles' fingers brush his own when he hands the photo back, lingering for just a second longer than strictly necessary like he knows it'll make Jared's pulse skip a beat. "Just so you don't confuse me with any of the other guys who secretly develop your pornos when I call."

The guy hums a tiny, amused sound and this time instead of biting his lip, he licks it, slow and tempting. So much for willing away that erection.

"It's not porn. It's an artistic study of the human form," almost sounds like an argument except for how it's blatant flirting. If Jared leans any farther across the counter he's going to be on top of it.

Like hell is he going to let an opportunity to get another one of those smiles pass him by, so he teases, "A likely story. I bet you pull this all the time. Lure poor, unsuspecting photo techs into your clutches with the promise of your hot naked body."

Ok, maybe that was a little too far because the blush that was just starting to go away is rising again in Freckles' cheeks, slowly trickling down his neck to disappear under the collar of a tight, light blue v-neck. His eyes are glinting almost playfully though, even if he is embarrassed. Not that Jared sees what he has to be ashamed about.

"Hmm," Freckles muses, mock-thoughtful, "Well, it would be a hell of a pick-up strategy.” Their arms are barely touching where they’re both using them to lean on, faces so close they’re practically breathing the same air. The other man’s fingers brush lightly at Jared’s elbows, just enough contact that he can’t decide whether it itches or tickles.

“'Course, it'd involve a lot of really elaborate set up with, say, finding out that a guy I was into was working at a photo lab for the summer,” he continues, switching off between refusing to meet Jared’s eyes and refusing to look away, “And then, you know, going somewhere to actually take the pictures, not to mention finding out his work schedule to make sure he'd be the one to get his hands on the photos. That'd be, you know, a lot of work when I could just go up to him and say ‘hey’ or something.”

His voice gets softer from there and he’s concentrating so hard on the weird-ass mole beside Jared’s nose it makes him want to reach up and make sure it’s not, like, bleeding or something. “Unless, I guess, I happened to be sort of shy, or maybe not the kind of person he'd have noticed, say, in high school. Or if maybe I wasn't quite sure if that rumor about him coming out after graduation was true. I'd have had to have liked him for a long time to put in that much effort just so I could have an out and not be completely publicly crushed if he wasn't interested."

Finally he stops to suck in a breath, his chest heaving with it and for a moment that thing that's now definitely hope is back in his eyes.

"But that would be pathetic," his eyes hit the floor and his hand smoothes back through his hair even though there's no way for it to fall into his face and there's... there's something there at the edge of Jared's consciousness that just won't click into place, his mind slogging through all of the hypotheticals trying to make head or tails. "So it's a good thing it's not a pick-up and I'm just some dude with a friend who can't keep her camera to herself."

"Yeah," is all Jared manages to mumble out, far too much of his brain occupied with choppy pieces of an image that keeps trying to overlay itself on Freckles; black-frame glasses half-hidden behind longer, mousier hair, bulky clothes, an ink-stain right there on the edge of his chin which seems like a weirdly specific imaginary detail.

He doesn't really focus back in completely until he feels the heat of fingers against this own and looks down to see Freckles trying to liberate the remaining pictures from Jared's grip. Immediately Jared lets them go, synapses still misfiring confusedly.

"So, you'll call me?" Freckles asks, slightly unsteady. He's bending the pictures back and forth in his grip, probably permanently curling them which is just a damn shame. To stop suck a travesty, Jared sets his hand on top of the fidgeting ones, lets it stay there because the touch is like grabbing hold of an electric fence – don’t ask – like his muscles all stopped responding to anything but this.

"Absolutely."

 _Bam!_ The guy grins outright and it's like whatever that thing right on the tip of Jared's memory was decides to unlock the parking brake and peel out, turning Jared into pedestrian street pizza in the process. A flash of that grin from the back of class – class _es_? - doodling something on the palm of his own hand or up in the auditorium catwalk fiddling with the lights or typing up a storm in the tucked away corner of the journalism room when Jared would go in to visit Sandy or, or, or.

"Ok. Great. Awesome," Freckles is saying as he backs away like Jared's holding him at gunpoint. "I'm- just gonna go now before I say anything stupid. More stupid. Whatever."

The door chimes again as he pushes it open with his back and Jared needs to say, like, any-fucking-thing so he blurts, "I'll call you!" again like he hadn't just blackmailed the dude into giving him his number in the first place. Except maybe not and he was the one getting played the whole time. Possibly?

"Cool," Freckles enthuses, fucking beaming and it's fantastic and for just a second sort of makes Jared for get why he cares how the hell this all just went down anyway. "Bye, Jared."

"Bye," he starts to say back, realizing with a jolt that he has no sweet clue what this guy's real name is – parents probably weren’t cruel enough to name him Freckles - but then he's gone, disappearing into the bright haze of afternoon light, leaving nothing in his wake but the quiet thunk of the door shutting and a brief gust of heat from outside.

For a long while Jared stares out of the tinted front windows at the laze of midday traffic. Now, he's not entirely certain, but he has a feeling that none of that just made any sense. Or alternatively, it made a lot of sense. It's kind of hard to tell.

When he finally slumps down into his little whirly chair again, swiveling back and forth thoughtfully, his eye catches on a start white rectangle against the scratched-up countertop.

It's the picture he'd made his little deal for. On the front, Freckles is somehow even better-looking than the first time Jared looked at it, possibly because now he knows what those features actually add up to instead of just guessing at it. On the back is a chicken-scratch of digits that his fingers are already itching to punch into his cell and below them, a scrawl that makes the searching part of Jared's goldfish-memory chime just like the front door: _Jensen._


End file.
